Political Strife Caused By Climate Change Doomed The Mayans

Friday, November 9, 2012 - 09:30 in Paleontology & Archaeology

Chichen Itza Daniel Armesto/WikimediaArchaeologists argue that drought caused by climate variation played a major role in the decline and fall of Mayan civilization. Debilitating drought may have been a major factor in the fractious politics that ended the Maya civilization, according to archaeologists. Maya culture thrived in wet seasons and fell apart when the rains ceased. "It's an example of a sophisticated civilization failing to adapt successfully to climate change," said James Baldini, a professor at Durham University in the UK. This claim is the result of new 2,000-year-old climate records from caves, a "war index" consisting of certain keywords in Mayan rock inscriptions, and archaeological data. The decline and fall of the Maya is still a great mystery, and the role of climate change--specifically, drought--has been controversial in part because of the lack of data. To remedy this, Baldini and researchers from the U.S., Switzerland, Germany and Belize analyzed stalagmites from...

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